[yugaya]

You will find information on that in our research article here: http://www.rodoslovlje.com/documentation/naming-customs-among-ethnic-serbs-xix-century

Scroll down to the KUMSTVO (Godbrotherhood) section for explanation of that relationship and who was usually chosen to be kum either as a godparent at baptism or a witness at a wedding.

[yugaya]

Second record is an example of I guess a paternity wrongly identified (Lončar Milivoj first entered as the father), and that was changed to father Vesić Dane. Probably later registration of marriage or paternity since there is a note that cites the evidence for this change as another entry in the vital records from year 1919.

Often such mistakes in the original records were only discovered when people either died or wanted to get married and the priest looked up the original birth entrry for the first time. 🙂

[yugaya]

First is a birth record, three columns are information on the parents, father, mother. The fourth column is the note area, where it is listed that this individual Smiljanić Marko born in 1895. died in 1972. . I will re post the image with translation of all fields.

[yugaya]

Hi,

Can you please provide any other information you have – birth year, year of emigrating, names of any siblings that also emigrated. If you know family patron saint (slava) that would be of help as well. Were your ancestors members of Serbian Orthodox Church after emigrating; If yes, you need to hunt down the original records and scan them – often the crucial information about the household number of origin is listed even in the marriage records of the children of the emigrants, under the parents of the bride or groom information.

[yugaya]

You should check if the records are available via LDS microfilms. Due to many ethnic Germans in that area having a lot of mixed faith marriages you could also provide a few names and birth years for people born prior to 1922., and I will check if they pop up in the Catholic records that are available.

Other than that, you have to contact the archive in Serbia that holds the original church records or hire a local researcher – nothing is available online other than a few summary Protestant parishes annual yearooks. there is information if your ancestors owned their own business or a shop, were teachers or members of clergy, civil servants.

[yugaya]

We just got contacted by Rajko!s great-grandson in one of the local genealogy groups where I forwarded your question. The group is public, your relative does not speak English so I will translate and send you what he wrote in a PM. He is waiting to get in contact:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sumadija/permalink/538477256255905/

[yugaya]

I only found FIUS surname as belonging to ethnic Slovenians.

Your family may have either been residents of Belgrade before WWII, or they were part of Slovenian people deportations from Slovenia to Serbia during the war. The first names of the children suggest that mother was Serbian. You need to look for place of birth of Matjik Fius in Slovenia most probably, and you should join this very helpful facebook group :

https://www.facebook.com/groups/183735961660531/

If you know the birth year of the children, their birth records can be obtained from Belgrade municipal office where they lived.

[yugaya]

Thank you so much, and could you please provide email contact so that I can forward it to people looking for information on ancestors from that area?

[yugaya]

The state archive in Bela Crkva, Srbija has the records you need. I have been trying to obtain records from them but they have been semi-responsive so far they jumped at the opportunity of someone from abroad contacting them, but when we applied to have the records purchased from inside Serbia to cut the costs for a member family they became quite…disinterested. Usually that is a sign that someone was hoping to make a quick buck. 🙁

I will email them again and try to raise the questions of possibly including your request for information too, and see if there is any response.

[yugaya]

John,

I will be forwarding your request for relatives to come forward on local genealogy boards. Due to recent conflicts, the bulk of your relatives are probably living in Serbia.

[yugaya]

Jacob,

Can you give me more information like birth years and the year when they emigrated? That would help narrow down the family. As for reconnecting with same family descendants that can be a tough job due to migrations after WWII and the most recent conflicts – to forward your request for reconnecting I have to know where to look for the relatives based on the exact location where your ancestors came from.

Also since the family remained Serbian Orthodox you should get hold of the scans of their original church records after emigrating – even in marriage records of their children information on original household can be found, which is essential for establishing and confirming the family of origin you are looking for. For that you have to go directly to the church, transcripts or indexed data won’t help.

HRNJAK surname is not very common so you should definitely try contacting any and all Hrnjaks you can find on social networks, Svilars are a bit more frequent but still there is a good chance you are connected with any that you come across too.

[yugaya]

Hi,

I will look up the resources on your family history that are available in Serbian&Montenegrin language as well as Albanian, and look for any publicly available addresses or emails of Barjaktari family members from that area ( if I find any I will send you that information in a private message). For a more detailed research of records you would have to either get in touch with them to help you or hire a local researcher to go to the archives in Montenegro & Albania for you. Do you know the exact village of origin of your clan?

Ethnic Albanian genealogy as far as I have noticed is most actively discussed on message boards in German language, so you may try getting in touch with folks there for more assistance.

[yugaya]

Glad I was able to help, hopefully the priest will reply to you soon. 🙂

If you need assistance with anything while in Budapest you can contact me via email: yugaya @ gmail.com

[yugaya]

I would discard the WWI death record – it is an online transcript of a record in which the place name was recorded by a non-native speaker, so the spelling is off and not in the direction you need it to be ( ie it is distorted by French native speakers, not a German, Polish or Hungarian or Serbian transcription) . To see if this is more than a chance match you will need to check military records and literature for movements of the regiment in which that soldier served to determine where exactly he died – my guess is that either he died in a place in Serbia which *sounds* similar to how it is written there ( which as I said I am unable to identify so way off from the original spelling), or the country where he died is wrongly identified as Serbia and that Sapolitza from his death record is somewhere not here.:)

Yes, there were many ethnic Germans living in this region who came throughout XVIII and XIX century as colonists but the usual, logical migration path would have been from (today) Poland to Serbia, not the other way around. There are a lot of colonist records available, and even the few who did not like it and returned back home were recorded but I do not see BOTH family in any records that would match “Sapolitza” village over here even remotely and give wind to the theory that maybe her family did come to (today) Serbia as colonists, she was born here but then soon they all decided to go back. In any case, without corresponding location to check that remains only a very distant possibility that you should revisit in the future but only after searching for her closer to where she lived, was married, had children…

Since you have her in the records in Poland in 1847. concentrate on locating her origin over there – use the local pages in Polish language and try to match the surname in localized spelling with a location in Poland as the most logical place of origin for her.

This is the Wikipedia page in Polish which lists place-names in Polish and German: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niemieckie_nazwy_geograficzne_w_wojew%C3%B3dztwie_zachodniopomorskim#S

Based on the context you provided, I would try to look up if BOTH surname or any alternate period spellings are found in the records for the village of Sąpol(n)ica over there in Poland, because it is both phonetically and geographically a more plausible match to what her death record lists as her place of origin than anything I was able to come up with in this region.

Also consider possible misreading or misspelling in the original record so search for *apolitza, Sopolitza, *obalitz*….as a valid place name – if the priest who wrote her death record was not from the area where she was born he would have written the closest to what he heard.

[yugaya]

If she was Jewish then there is a possible match in period records for the surname BOTH (BOT) in Romania, village of Săpânța, Hungarian language place name is Szaplonca.

http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szaplonca

but without more information that is just my best guess based on available period public records.

[Author]

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